By Elizabeth Prata

Revelation. The poor, neglected, misunderstood book of Revelation.

Overlooked, rarely preached on, even the mention of it incites arguments (Symbolic! Actual! Amillennial! Pre-millenial!) and so, the blessing promised twice in the book is not received by many believers, due to forsaking it for calmer scriptural pastures. (Ahhh, the book of John…Colossians…)

The Apokalupsis/Revelation word used in Revelation 1:1 means “revelation, unveiling”. The Book reveals the Lord’s plans for the end of time. “See? I have told you ahead of time,” Jesus said to the disciples in Mathew 24:25. He declares the end from the beginning. (Isaiah 46:10).

By Elizabeth Prata

I was born in December 1960. My first memory is when I was a few weeks past 3 years old, when the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan Show on television in February 1964.

So I grew up in the turbulent 1960s. Day by day, week by week, year by long year, TV viewers were shown images of war, never before seen in such gruesome vitality. Live shooting in an incomprehensible jungle and a nightly count of the deaths and wounded solemnly intoned by Walter Cronkite. Other newsworthy scenes we were subjected to were of mayhem, marches, chaos, angry feminists, open homosexuals, riots, Kent State, constantly on the news and in newspapers, the only widespread sources at the time. Once, my mother asked my brother if he would go to Viet Nam as a soldier when he turned 18 or if he’d object and go to Canada. He was six. It felt like the war would last another 12 years until he turned of soldier age.